Last week I posted my craziest Mac experiment in a while — a script that handles adding and updating myriad BetterTouchTool Touch Bar (and menu bar) widgets. A couple of days after I posted it, I ended up adding some widgets for Zoom that may actually be the most useful of the bunch.
automation, bettertouchtool, macos, plugin, scripting
I’ve recently put some1 time into making a Touch Bar “dashboard” using BetterTouchTool. I know, the first thing you thought when you read that was “but Apple is discontinuing the Touch Bar!” Let me explain. Or try to. I almost didn’t write this post because I was worried it would indicate mental instability of some kind2. But how could I call myself a “Mac Mad Scientist” if things didn’t get a little crazy? We’re all mad here, right?
automation, bettertouchtool, bunch, doing, gestures, howzit, icons, keyboard, launchbar, macos, network, scripting, shortcuts, status, weather, where
Over the last couple of years I’ve spent an upsetting amount of money trying to find a cough button solution for my XLR mic setup. The audio interface I fell in love with (Komplete Audio 6) wasn’t compatible with Shush, the cough button solution I’d used for years with my USB mics. So I started looking at hardware solutions.
hardware, keyboard, microphone, podcasting, solutions
I asked on Twitter about “rubberizing” my keyboard tray. I didn’t know where to begin solving this problem. I got some very helpful feedback and thought I’d follow up with the solution that worked for me, on the off chance it helps someone else.
hardware, keyboard, solutions
Jay Miller has published his first video on Bunch. It’s a walkthrough of a Bunch he uses for automating his email newsletter process, and is a great example of Bunch’s usefulness. It highlights some cool Bunch features like embedded snippets and calling Keyboard Maestro URLs, as well as some features that would be considered more “advanced,” such as assigning variables with script results and using variables in conditions.
automation, bunch, video
Thanks to SummerFest 2021 for sponsoring BrettTerpstra.com this week! Some of the best Mac apps you can find (and some of my personal favorites) for research, project management, and more are on sale right now. No bundles with stuff you don’t need, just great prices from great devs.
sponsor, tools, writing
Web excursions brought to you in partnership with Setapp. Get access to hundreds of Mac and iOS apps for one low monthly subscription fee.
bookmarking, bookmarks, reading, scripting
In the process of blogging here, as well as writing extensive documentation for my own apps, I end up writing about keyboard combinations a lot. Over the years I’ve made this easier on myself in various ways, but I think I’ve finally perfected a Jekyll plugin to make the process simple and the results consistent across my sites. I’m calling it, not too cleverly, “kbd.”
blogging, jekyll, keyboard, plugin, shortcuts, writing
Welp, I did it. Bunch 1.4.0 is officially out, and is showing up as an automatic update for unsuspecting Bunch users as I write this. This should probably (definitely) have been a major version bump to 2.0, but I didn’t because that seemed grandiose. I mean, it is a grandiose update, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
automation, automator, beta, bunch, macos, writing
